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Re: Section 508 / WAI Sidebar

for

From: Tim Luoma
Date: Aug 7, 2002 11:34AM

On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Jukka Korpela wrote:

> Tim Luoma wrote:
>
> > Hrm.... I didn't even know about the _content as an option...
>
> It really isn't an option.

That explains it then ;-)


> Quite possibly not all browsers obey this rule; but it's hardly a good
> idea to rely on browsers doing something strictly against a
> specification.

In general I would agree 100%, which is why I make sure to validate and
sanity check the pages.

If a browser did ignore the _content then it will simple render the link
in the same page. No harm there.


> > That said, both Mozilla and Opera support it, and it validates,
>
> Support in which sense? By treating links as if the attribute were not
> present.

'Support it' in the sense and context that we have been talking about.

"Try _content instead of _blank to re-use the window rather than making a
new window for each"

That is what Opera and Mozilla do in their sidebar implementations.

Give the very specific nature of this page (to be used as a sidebar for
Mozilla and Opera) I might argue that using _content is fine... especially
considering that the whole functionality rests on XHTML 1.0 transitional
support for 'target' which isn't in XHTML1.0 strict anyway.

However it occurred to me that _new does the same thing and IS part of the
spec, so the page now uses _new

> So what _should_ be used as target attribute value? It depends on whether
> you are using frames or multiple windows or both. Normally, for
> accessibility reasons and other reasons, it is best to use neither, and then
> no target attribute should be used.

Of course... however, again when talking specifically about a page
designed to be a sidebar which links to a page much too large to be put
into a sidebar panel and which would then offer the user no way to get
back to the panel itself, target is preferable.

TjL




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